


Finish the Job

by stitchcasual



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Gen, Jack gets mentioned, i also don't really know how guns work so we're just gonna roll with it, mortal peril, reaper's wraith form works like this because it's convenient to the plot, what's under the reaper mask
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2017-10-13
Packaged: 2019-01-16 22:19:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12351684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchcasual/pseuds/stitchcasual
Summary: Jesse McCree faces off against the dreaded Reaper, prepared to live or die if it means the world will be free of his terror. He wasn't prepared to see the monster under the mask.





	Finish the Job

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tiny_owlbear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiny_owlbear/gifts), [NothingAlarming](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NothingAlarming/gifts).



> For Tiny & Avery. You know what you did.
> 
> *busts onto the Overwatch scene with a bucket of angst*

Careless. A rookie mistake, one he thought himself better than by now. He should have known better than to underestimate Jesse; after all, he’d seen the kid’s skills firsthand when Overwatch took out Deadlock, had seen the perceptiveness lurking behind the drawl and fancy getup when they spoke afterward. He’d been the one to offer Jesse a position within Blackwatch because of it, the one to convince Jack that this kid could be useful if he were given a second chance. He’d trained Jesse himself, showing more of an interest in the kid’s progress than he had in anything else for a long while.

Now they circle each other, low on ammunition, dripping from numerous wounds but not dead yet. Jesse holds his Peacekeeper up, trained on the center of mass for the body in front of him, but he stands hunched over, his metal arm pressed against the holes in his stomach. He’ll have to shoot slower that way, no fanning the hammer. One potential advantage for the Reaper in this standoff, but the kid always was a damn good shot, especially when he was down to his last magazine.

“You just don’t know when to quit, do you?”

The cowboy chuckles, winces. “Don’t reckon I do.” And he raises the barrel of his pistol and fires.

The owl mask cracks under the shot, falls to the ground in two pieces, and Reaper can’t turn his back on an opponent, can’t access his wraith form yet with the damage that’s been done to his physical body, so he just stands, stares, scowls at the man who exposed him. Jesse takes a step back. If this is the end, in a way Reaper’s glad it’s the kid and not Jack. Jesse always was a little less sentimental. Jesse will go for the kill. Even though the recognition hits his face, widens his eyes, drops his jaw. Even if he lowers his pistol just a fraction.

Reaper laughs, low and drawn out, menacing. The sound echoes through the empty streets around them. He twitches his shotguns closer together, and Jesse’s pistol is back where it should be, right at the center of him.

“Surprised?”

He knows what Jesse sees, has the hideous details memorized. Three-quarters of his face, or what used to be his face, is gone, replaced by dark, swirling mist. He has no jaw, no mouth, no cheeks, no nose; he barely has eyes. But it’s the eyes that haunt him if he sees them in a mirror. The eyes haven’t changed. When the rest of him died, became incorporeal mist bound to what remains of his flesh, all held together by sheer will and the armor he wears, his eyes remained the same: wide, expressive brown eyes. Haunted and pained.

The same eyes that watched Jesse leave Blackwatch rather than back him up when the rebellion broke out. The same eyes that saw every time Jesse and Genji snuck out of the base, even if they pretended not to. The same eyes that weighed and measured the potential of a young punk as they stared each other down across an interrogation room table. The eyes he thought he’d finally closed forever when he went down fighting as Overwatch fell.

“Gabriel?”

To his credit, Jesse doesn’t drop his Peacekeeper this time, keeps it aimed true, can perhaps see in the face-that-is-not-a-face what he doesn’t want to see. Reaper snarls and the wind kicks up, clattering a few stray leaves past their feet.

“Gabriel is dead.”

“Well then,” Jesse drawls, tilting his gun up to wave it back and forth between his eyes, “you got somethin’ o’ his just there. I’d appreciate if ya gave it back.” Reaper can see the effort it takes for Jesse to joke, how his arm tightens across his stomach, how his lips twitch from cocky grin to grimace and back, how his eyes soften and his brows draw together just a touch. He can’t remember what it’s like to feel pain like that. When your entire existence is agony, you tend to forget. 

He only knows he’s injured because he moves slower, his shotguns feel heavier. He knows he’s critically wounded because he can’t access his wraith form. If he looks down at his body, he’ll see smoke curling out of the holes Jesse left. His body is trying to repair itself, knit whatever passes for organs and tissues back together, stop the involuntary leaking. If he can keep Jesse talking long enough, he’ll regain function, can flee the scene. Thankfully the kid isn’t entirely devoid of sentimentality. 

“Wish I could,” Reaper says and drops his head, looking up out the top of those eyes. Jesse’s nostrils flare, scenting for the trap, but either he can’t find it or he deludes himself into believing it’s not there. Reaper watches the decision to trust relax Jesse’s hand around the grip, uncurl his index finger and rest it against the trigger guard. The vulnerability makes him twitch, every nerve he has left screaming for him to shoot the kid now, wound him further, draw out his life force, cross one more name off his list. Instead he deflates, rolling his shoulders forward under his armor.

“It ain’t too late, Gabe,” and damn if the kid’s earnest words don’t tug at the cavern of his heart, stirring at something that’s lain dormant for years. But there’s nothing for him to go back to; anything that he may desire from that life burned and died and was buried, just like him. It’s been too late for him since before Overwatch, he just hadn’t realized it then, hadn’t made his peace with who he is for far too long, if indeed “peace” can be used to describe anything about him.

He chuckles, a sinister rumble, and Jesse’s eyes narrow under his hat. The kid’s fingers flex and refit themselves around the pistol grip and trigger, and Reaper feels a little incongruous swell of pride that the instincts he’d honed in Jesse are at least serving him well when his good nature is doing its level best to get him killed.

“You never could lie to me, boy,” he says, and Jesse flinches, his whole face grimacing, lips curling, eyes squinting. “Don’t lie to yourself too.”

“I ain’t lyin’,” the kid mutters, the same way he used to backtalk during pre and post mission briefings, Genji snickering beside him, the other Blackwatch agents at least having the decency to attempt to smother their laughter and grins in the presence of their superior officer. There’s no one here now to show off for, and Reaper understands the remark for what it is: a grasping at normalcy, an attempt to return to the way things were. Perhaps he was wrong about Jesse after all, and the kid has grown too soft in the years since he left, too nostalgic, the distance casting a rosy tint on their past. If that’s the case, he can’t wait for Jesse to take care of things. It’s up to him to end it.

He shoots twice, fires one shotgun right after the other, and Jesse falls, no chance to return fire before the buckshot catches him in the chest, the stomach, the arm. The hat tumbles from the kid’s head when he hits the ground, rolls a few feet away. Reaper pulls in a deep, rattling breath, drawing out Jesse’s life and regenerating his own, knitting his body back together, feeling the strength return to his form. The kid struggles anyway, tries to rise, and Reaper sets one boot on his wrist. Jesse stills underfoot, groans, rolls his head to stare up into those eyes he used to know. His mouth opens as if to speak.

“Stay down,” Reaper growls, then dissolves. His wraith form tugs uncomfortably on his consciousness, letting him know he has a lot of healing left to do, but he pushes through, rides it until he collapses to his knees a half mile away. He drops his shotguns, empty of shells as they are, and props his left arm up against an alley wall. He stays there, just breathing for a long moment, and does not wonder if Jesse had any backup at all or if he’ll be there, bleeding out in the small side street, until he dies. 

His right begins to raise on its own, and Reaper fumbles once before he gets a proper hold on his sidearm, though he’s barely able to draw it.

“Relájate, amigo.” Sombra materializes, the force underneath his arm, and gives him an arch look. “Ves? Soy yo.” She shrugs, hoisting his arm a little higher over her shoulders, but doesn’t start moving until he drops the sidearm too and pushes himself off the wall, staggering mostly upright. Sombra catches most of his weight with a roll of her eyes and shake of her head, but she doesn’t dislodge him or try to hurry him down the back alleys he steers them toward. She doesn’t ask how much farther or rib him for not being able to handle himself, and he worries what this means.

“What are you doing here?” he asks once they reach his ship, secreted behind two abandoned buildings in the old industrial sector. Sombra laughs and spins away from him as he leans against the ship.

“Who, me?” She presses fingers to her heart, the wicked grin on her face undermining the innocence of the gesture. “Who says I was even here?” She dematerializes in front of his eyes, her finger the last thing he sees as she taps the part of his face that would be a nose if he still had one.

Reaper pulls himself into his ship, setting the autopilot for one of his bases farther away. He’ll have to deal with Sombra’s leverage over him later. And Jesse...Jesse…

For now, he plucks a new mask from the wall, slides it into place, and rearms himself from the stockpile he keeps before curling up to attempt to sleep through the flight as though he believes that could possibly happen when his thoughts get farther and farther away from his body as the ship moves along its programmed course.

**Author's Note:**

> Spanish translation: "Relax, buddy. See? It's just me."
> 
> I have so many feelings about Gabriel Reyes! (also Overwatch in general but Gaaabe ugh)  
> Feel free to come yell at me on [the tumblr](http://stitchcasual.tumblr.com) !! I'm also working on a series of short Gabe/Jack hand holding fics that are being posted there as I complete them so....y'know...


End file.
